Not All Is As Is
by Mooncloudpanther
Summary: "Not all is as is" ; an AU in which Tygra and Bengali grow up together with the Royal family of Thundera. Mostly drabbles.
1. Chapter 1

"Not all is as is" ; an AU in which Tygra and Bengali grow up together with the Royal family of Thundera. Mostly drabbles.

To start with: the scene of Tygra's (and now also Bengali's) arrival. (For those of you unaware, I heard a rumor they were going to be brothers, and if you think about it, they would be twins or half, and I'm going with twins.)

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><p>Leona had wanted a cub for years, so badly it was painful. Claudus always reassured her, telling her one could not force nature and the gods would bless them when they were ready. He always delivered his words so gently that she always wanted to and allowed herself to believe him, despite knowing otherwise. The truth of the matter was much more heartbreaking.<p>

Peering into the basket beside her mate, she couldn't help but feel overjoyed. To her, it was as if the gods had blessed them with not one, but two sons.

The crowd was hushed, but curious, as Claudus reached into the basket, consequently earning himself two purrs from the sleeping bundles, and pulled a tucked card out. She glanced at it and smiled even more broadly.

Names.

"Just their names," Claudus announced, his voice light and curious. "Nothing more." Then he paused and looked up, "Where did you come from, little tigers?"

_Tygra,_ she looked at the orange-furred cub, swathed in a green blanket, _and Bengali._ Her gaze transferred to his pale brother, who seemed to have a natural blue 'mask' that curved down from the bridge of his nose to his cheekbones, before travelling to his ears. He was swathed in a dark blue blanket.

Warmth, akin to the feeling she felt with her sister's children, seeped through her body. And then she reached into the basket, picking Tygra up and holding him to Claudus, before picking his brother up. "It seems the gods have delivered us sons." The brothers stirred in their sleep. Claudus looked down at Tygra, perplexed.

"Tigers?" he asked, leaning closer.

She looked deeply at the sleeping bundle in her arms, and then at Tygra in Claudus' arms. "Not just tigers, Claudus. Princes."

They both purred.

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><p>They were playful and rambunctious. Within weeks, the two were crawling - and falling - all around the nursery that Leona had feared would never be used.<p>

With some minor renovations, it had been outfitted for the fraternal twin princes. As it was, she spent most of her time in their with her happy and handsome little princes, and often slept on the bed that had also been brought in - specifically for her to use if she felt the need to. She would play with them both, for one was rarely awake or even away from the other - a lovely fact she had discovered very soon after a second cradle had been brought to the nursery, and the twins had been found sleeping on the floor the very next morning.

She had been very concerned, but once she had confirmed that they were - thankfully - unhurt from their fall, she had sent out her lady-in-waiting and her handmaid to acquire a much larger crib for the both of them.

As of the moment, Leona was sitting on her bed, chuckling softly at Tygra as he crawled under the light pink blanket. Bengali seemed to be more content sitting up and observing the sunlit room in his quiet and mellow manner.

She leaned forward, recognizing this as Tygra playing, and grasped the corner of the blanket. "Come out, come out wherever you are." she spoke in a sing-song, gently lifting the blanket. Tygra looked up from where he lay in 'hiding', confused but nonetheless happy and giggling. Of course, because Tygra was giggling, so was Bengali.

Leona laughed fondly as she scooped them both up and held them close. "You are my handsome little princes." She nuzzled them and they quite enthusiastically pawed her face and mane.

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><p>Leona was overjoyed when she learned she was with a cub. This could be the one, the one child she was meant to carry and nurture before entering the world.<p>

The twins, who even at a young age were clever, but very kind, would always be her children. She would always love them, no matter what. But the cub she carried was special in a way that Tygra and Bengali had never been had the opportunity to be; the cub she carried was a sign that she _was_ capable of carrying life, that she wasn't infertile.

She was so over joyed that she cried, and Claudus was, at first, concerned that something was wrong.

They didn't tell anyone right away, just in case... something went awry as Jaga feared it might. But once it was obvious, they decided they had to tell little Tygra and quiet Bengali that they were going to be big brothers.

She came into the room, with Claudus' arm gently slung around her smaller frame, to see Tygra and Bengali both wrestling a little - both wore blue shirts and white leggings, but the blue of Bengali's shirt was of a much darker color that complimented his white fur better than it would his brother's dark orange fur. They stood there for several minutes, just watching the two, who had seemingly grown up so fast - had four years really gone by already? - as they played.

Finally, Claudus announced in a gentle voice, "We have some exciting news, Tygra, Bengali."

They both stopped wrestling, and sat up with happy joy that lit their features was contagious, and coupled with the surreal knowledge that she was with a cub, was enough to make her break out into a broad grin.

"The gods have blessed us a second time," she told them softly, cupping her swollen baby-bump.

Claudus added, "You're going to be big brothers."

They shared an excited look, and a happy little gasp.

Leona opened her arms, silently beckoning them over. Her own expression fell slightly as she realized that they - mostly Tygra - would be crushed to learn that their younger sibling would be inheriting the throne. For four years, they - again, mostly Tygra, though Bengali rarely seemed to mind or even be jealous - had been told time and time again it was their - Tygra's - birthright. That one day, Tygra would be King and wield the Sword of Omens.

Their expressions fell - they were such sensitive cubs, that her own mood easily affected theirs - and they solemnly got up and crossed the room to her. She clasped Tygra's left shoulder and Bengali's right shoulder, and crouched down. Leona knew she needed to reassure them.

"You are my handsome little pr-" she hesitated. They were still princes but, no longer _the_ princes or prince. "-darlings," she corrected herself to. The small smiles that had started to spread on their features were wiped away with sad, slightly open-mouthed expressions.

Leona felt just as crushed as them.

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><p>It was when the servants had brought the basket little Tygra and Bengali had been delivered in, that they discovered it had not just been the two princes carried in it.<p>

There was also a curious hammer with a note that read, "For Bengali, the younger of the two" and a blue bola-whip with a similar note, but for Tygra. And that was how they decided Tygra would be the Crown Prince, rather than Bengali. Not wanting any harm to befall the heirloom gifts that had been sent with them, Leona and Claudus had them locked in the vault until they were older.

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><p><em>This is just a little something I thought of and then fell in love with. Mostly meant to be drabbles, but I could make this into a retelling of the 2011 series... if I'm asked nicely. Not going to show Leona's death since this has been from her POV.<em>

_... and I have no childbirth or pregnancy experience (which is good, since I'm only fifteen), soooo... no._

_Plus, this was a nice break from working on Ruins We Call Home (for those of you that have not read it). (For those of you waiting for a chapter 9, be careful what you ask for: I am entering a crucial and intense sub-arc that I want to have completely written out before I update. :3 I'll be evil, though, and still update it chapter-by-chapter once I do finish the sub-arc.)_


	2. Chapter 2

Totally late... but something sweet and fluffy for Valentine's Day (maybe also character study?). Brotherly love. They're probably about fourteen.

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><p>Bengali found himself staring around their shared room, one brow arched up.<p>

He wasn't _quite_ confused, but he didn't quite know what he was looking at either - well, he did, and he was looking at his twin wearing an expression that Bengali equated with someone caught with their paw in the metaphorical cookie jar, and _that_ is what confused him. After a long silence of just staring at each other, in the eyes - blue peering into brown quietly asking 'what are you doing?' and brown gazing into blue, silently responding 'oh... hey.' - Bengali finally opened his mouth and voiced, "Uh... Tygra? What are you doing?" _Is he really hiding something behind his back? That's not at all suspicious._

Tygra blinked once. Twice. Then he dropped his eyes down to the floor. "..._well,_ you see, Bengali..." he trailed for a moment, before pulling a long, rectangular, blue-velvet box from behind his back and shoving it at Bengali's chest. "I'm a jerk, so I got something to say 'sorry' and 'thank you' for putting up with me." he rushed.

Bengali jumped at the abruptness and speed of the movement, quickly finding himself half-juggling the box in his paws, with a surprised exclamation, before getting a firm grip of it.

If he hadn't been so startled, he would have made a sarcastic remark about twins 'putting up' with each other _or,_ the much more tempting topic, of Tygra's sudden and very rare humility of the moment. For a start, he _never_ admitted to being a jerk, even when Bengali tilted his head at him, raising a brow with a firm 'you're being an ass again' look - despite that usually getting Tygra to sigh and stalk off to brood somewhere - and never, not really, thanked _anyone_ for, well, _anything_ unless it was mandatory. Like favors from nobility, Father requisitioning him his own dagger - things like that.

Secondly, he never apologized. Not when he was a complete and utter ass to Lion-O - and he _knew_ he was; there was no way he _couldn't_ with the way Bengali glared at him sometimes. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration - Tygra apologized to Father and nobility when his behavior was out-of-line, but it was more of a formality than a genuine apology and acknowledgement that he had crossed a fine line.

Instead, he just stared at the box, brows knit and expression pulled into an almost-grimace that read 'what am I supposed to do with this?' while he blinked a few times, letting the gesture sink in.

Finally, he looked up at Tygra, who was fidgeting... also something he didn't do under normal circumstances.

"Is this a trick?" Bengali blurted, glancing down at the box and back up at his dark-furred twin.

"What?" Tygra answered, face contorting and voice raising a few octaves, before he shook his head. "No... why would it be?"

Bengali blinked at him, blankly, before looking down at the box and muttering, "You _never_ apologize." And he really, really meant it - whether or not Tygra decided to respond to it or not. Tygra snapped at him all the time - often for no good reason other than he could without facing guaranteed retaliation (in fact, Bengali never really did unless his brother crossed that fine line between 'tolerable' to 'abusive', but Tygra hadn't since the first time... what, two years ago?) - and generally just blew him off - _also_ because he could without facing much more than mild irritation - in favor of... whatever it was that Tygra did when he wasn't dragging Bengali everywhere with him, sparring, studying, or clinging to their father.

"Sorry," Tygra mumbled, scuffing his foot on the polished stone floor. After a moment, he commented lightly, "I was going to wrap it for you, but..."

They both looked at the discarded cloth and string that had obviously earned Tygra's ire by being uncooperative and not malleable for his purposes. Bengali gave an amused snort and added 'wrapping gifts' to the list of things his brother was unskilled at - a frighteningly short list (so far consisting of 'being nice to Lion-O', 'genuine humility', 'not being a shameless flirt', and now 'wrapping gifts') that was very,_ very_ slowly growing over time.

Tygra grumbled some more at his snort, and Bengali shook his head, turning his attention back to the box. It was that shade of blue everyone told Bengali would compliment his eyes and natural robin-egg blue mask, perhaps from the sheer contrast of the darkness of its shade compared to the lightness of his markings, but he could never agree with because it always seemed too _striking._ And striking colors were, in his opinion, more of Tygra's thing.

Besides, he was fairly certain that color would make him look even more pale than his freshly-fallen-snow white fur already did, black stripes or not. Black, on the other paw, didn't seem to have quite the same affect - unfortunately, Father would prefer if he did not wear black. Mourning color and all.

"Well? Are you going to open it?" Tygra prompted, twisting his lips into a small scowl.

Bengali looked up and twisted his lips wryly, "No, Tygra. I'm just going to admire the color." he drawled. Under his breath, he muttered, "So bossy," and folded the lid of the box open to stare at its contents.

And he smiled.

In the back of his head - or, somewhere in the middle actually - he wondered how Tygra got this, but he decided against asking in favor of admiring the dagger. In some ways, it matched the one Tygra had been given by Father a year ago - it was definitely of the same smith's make, suggesting that it had been forged by the Royal Blacksmith himself (though, how Sumtra would have done so without Bengali, his 'protegee', ever finding out, the white tiger wasn't sure of - definitely something to take up with the older, mysterious tiger - but he couldn't really be surprised about it). The grip was dark blue, of the same shade as the box, with a silver pommel and guard, the latter of which was ornate and surprisingly detailed, curving with meticulous thought. There were carefully etched engravings on the slender, elongated, and genteely curved blade - which had only one cutting edge versus the two cutting edges a straight or 'round-curved' blade would have - but Bengali couldn't read them... the runes didn't seem to be written in Thunderian, and he couldn't recognize most of them anyway.

He would have to ask his Master - in trade only... Bengali was, apparently, quite bossy when he wasn't working the forge - about it later.

When he held it up to admire it better, the sunlight filtering into the room caught on the blade, making it glint. The grip was nice, if a bit large for his paw - but that just meant it would be a better fit when he was older and larger.

He caught sight of Tygra with a self-satisfied smirk and lowered the dagger, replacing it in its box, while keeping the smile. "Thank you. You could go with less smugness - but, thank you."

"Pfft," Tygra responded, before halfheartedly complaining, "You aren't supposed to thank me for a 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' gift, Bengali - that's not how it works!"

"Tch, whatever."

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><p><em>Technically, I did not promise a monster chapter, and this was what my muse brought forth to me. Happy Valentine's Day!<em>

_...even though it's late..._


	3. Chapter 3

Also for Valentine's Day Brother Fluff - and _also_ late. They're still probably fourteen, maybe fifteen.

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><p>Bengali, personally, preferred the winter months - the layers of nouveau swirl frost, the powdery blankets of snow cloaking the world in a hushed quiet... the way <em>everything<em> was white and he was suddenly the best at hide-and-seek (and how easy it was to sneak up on Tygra and dump a bunch of snow on his head and start a snow -not necessarily 'ball' - fight). But, most importantly, he loved the cool temperatures.

His and Tygra's fur was thick enough that they weren't cold so much as comfortable, even out rolling and laying around or playing in the snow for hours on end. In the Summer, they sweat more easily and became fatigued in the heat faster than even Lion-O, and that child was known for spontaneously finding energy and losing alarmingly quickly (he really needed to help the red-maned lion build up some stamina... lions didn't seem to have it quite as naturally as Bengali and Tygra did - of course, lions didn't seem nearly as inherently prodigious as them _either_). It was like he and Tygra had been _bred_ for the 'cold' and snowy months of the year, and if that were the case, Bengali really couldn't bring himself to mind at all. Even _if_ it gave Father a heart attack for them to be outside for six hours on end, snacking lightly when their stomachs protested, before they returned to their daily studies, having already quickly gone through their duties in excitement.

Bengali had abandoned his cloak - a needlessly heavy and thick thing of white fabric with blue and gold embroidery - a while ago, in favor of moving more quickly. Tygra seemed reluctant to lose his own identical cloak, because then he wouldn't be able to hide as well, but it didn't help his cause much in the end.

Especially if he had his hood up. _That_ just hindered his field of vision.

Smoothly formed snowball in paw, Bengali crept up to the corner and peeked around to see Tygra with his back to him. Grinning, he stepped out from behind cover and loosed the snowball at his twin, before ducking back behind the wall. The frustrated growl that Tygra gave was more than enough to tell Bengali that the powdery projectile had hit him in the back of the head.

And then the game was on again, with renewed zeal and vigor.

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><p>When they <em>weren't<em> outside or attending their studies or duties, nor eating, it was probably nighttime and they were probably 'sleeping'.

Tygra always started it. Bengali would be reading, over on his own bed, and Tygra would try to get his attention so they could talk - that _was_ something his brother was normally quite good at doing, getting people's attention that is, but not Bengali's when he was engrossed in a book. He would get irritated and instead of doing what a normal person would do and get his attention by poking him on the shoulder, or something, he would _chuck_ a pillow at his head.

Unsurprisingly, this was a quick way to get both Bengali's attention and ire. When this brotherly habit had started, Bengali would ask in irritation, "Can I _help_ you, Tygra?" But, they had passed that point, and Bengali would just throw one of his pillows back at Tygra, forcefully, and snap, "Piss off, I'm reading."

Tygra, not to be deterred, would get up, stalk over, and snatch the book from Bengali's clutches. "I can _see_ that, Bengali."

And they never knew how 'I can _see_ that' evolved into an all-out pillow fight and raucous laughter until their father - it had been a servant the first three weeks, but that proved pointless very fast... - came by and ordered them to bed with all the finality an amused father could muster with the choice words, "Boys, go to bed." Of course, their father cheated and was also the King, so that was quite a bit of finality.

It didn't stop Bengali from throwing the pillow that started it all - the first one Tygra threw to get his attention - back at his brother from across the twelve-or-so feet between their beds, earning him a grunt from Tygra.

Who wouldn't give Bengali back his return-fire pillow until the morning, or would maybe even save it to toss at him the next night. Bengali never knew which one it would be.

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><p><em>This one is a short one. But, it came partnered with Chapter Two, so it's excusable, right? Plus it's super late here. And it's fluff, with brothers having vague snowball and pillow fights.<em>


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